"If you only work in order to change things, you will simply go
nuts. I am an authority on it. The book is mostly about kites and dogs
and lizards and salamanders and magic." That is James Herndon,
reformed globetrotter turned public school teacher, describing his
newest book and confronting in characteristic stance the lugubrious
subject of U.S. public education. Everything Herndon observes takes
place in the "Spanish Main" intermediate school in
"Tierra Firma," a thinly disguised middle-class...